ARU Restaurant

"Aru is a restaurant with no bad angles. The room is a sea of warm, earthy tones that evoke the Aussie outback: terracotta brick floors, spotted gum woodwork, and banquettes the color of desert sand. Park yourself at the bar for the best view of the fire-fuelled open kitchen, where a team of white-jacketed chefs expedite polished plates with Chinese and Indonesian influence. Everyone’s ordering the pate en croute “with flavours of bánh mì”, but an order of claypot rice is equally necessary—maybe studded with fall-apart pork cheek, or hunks of Moreton Bay bug and bottarga—as is a tricked-up take on prawn toast made with wasabi-spiked spanner crab. Plenty of restaurants pitch the Asian-Australian concept, but few nail it so well." - Ellen Fraser

"Request a seat at the bar to watch chef Khanh Nguyen and his team cook your meal over the red gum wood-fired hearth. The menu is mostly Southeast Asian, but borrows with brio from other cuisines as well. This can mean an intricate pate en croute with flavors of banh mi, or a duck sausage served with caramelized onions on white bread-shaped bao, a playful take on the Australian sausage sanga. Even Nigella Lawson gave her tick of approval, coming back for the spanner crab fried rice." - Audrey Bourget, Sharlee Gibb